…1-800-FLOWERS. It was his custom to send a bouquet to each ‘client’ he was about to visit, often with a friendly note attached. He spoke into the phone: “This is Mascagni. I’d like a #34 to Vidalia Slipperbottom, 223 Carol Court. Yes. No… No. Cash. The note? ‘Flowers don’t last. Neither does life. Be careful.’ Yes, just like that. Fifteen minutes.” He disconnected, started the car, and drove to a nearby florist, where the bouquet was ready. He paid with several bills including 77R.
Just as he left the florist’s shop, however, the gangster slipped in a spot of oil dripping from a faulty electric transformer overhead. “One-thumb” skidded about 20 feet and smacked one of those clodhopper shoes right into the flanks of the same pit bull, who gave him what he deserved before a skilled dog trainer restrained him and paramedics arrived.
The florist, meanwhile, bundled up 77R with his day’s receipts and deposited it at the bank at the end of the day. The following day, the first person in the bank at a teller window was George Sharp, of all people–he of previous bills’ stories. The twenty-year-old fourth son of Jack and Eloise, George, an impudent and enterprising fellow, made up his mind to…
put his money into an unusual and unorthodox investment. To do this, he needed to withdraw $1170 out of the $1211.23 he had in his checking account–in cash. With the Labor Day weekend, it would take too much time for a check to be processed and George’s investee had to have the money up front and right now.
As per George’s request, the teller issued him the $1170 in the form of 11 $100 dollar bill, 1 $50 bill, and 1 $20 bill–77R. George stuck the bills into a bank envelope which he then stuck into his inside coat pocked. He then bolted out the door into the parking lot, got into his car, and peeled out into the street. He didn’t have much time. After making his way through a maze of city streets, he found the business where he was going to invest his $1170. It was a …
…betting shop. But not just any betting shop. The sign outside said Transdimensional Off-track Wagering and a subtitle read betting that’s out of this world! George went in.
The office was decorated in a restrained Modern style, all blond wood and frosted glass. There was no hint of either grubbiness or Vegas kitsch. It resembled one of the more prudent banks, which was probably according to plan. George did notice a few oddities, though: some of the silhouettes behind the frosted glass of the offices didn’t seem quite right at first glance, and there was an pleasant but unidentifiable tang to the air.
George went to the receptionist. “Hi! I was speaking to Ms Xue earlier, and I’d like to see her again. I have the documentation…”
He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Ms. Xue at the window; she recognized him. She took his cash envelope, counted the money out and put it into the till, and handed hm his betting voucher. He then sat on a sofa nearby awaiting the rest of the procedure.
As he waited his three older brothers, Andrew, Carl, and Eddie came in. Andrew was with his wife Joanie (Tim Werdin’s sister), and Carl was escorting Olivia Short. Carl was also a private detective.
Oh great, George thought. You’ve come here again to rag me about my ideas on betting.
Sure enough Eddie, George’s next-older brother, came over first to jeer him…
“Aren’t you even going to watch your race? Afraid you’ll lose?” Eddie waved at the double doors at the back of the room, the ones labeled Betting Theater.
George gritted out, “I can’t talk about that with you. I signed a non-disclosure agreement. You know that. Now leave me alone!”
George got up and went over to the double doors. One of the two ushers at the doors, both of whom had been watching events with interest, said, “Ticket please?”
George presented the receipt that Ms Xue had given him. “Thank you. Please go on in.” The usher opened the door, and George entered.
The others went to follow. The ushers, who were rather large and intimidating, closed the door and barred the way. “Tickets, please?”
Meanwhile, 77R was being bundled with other twenties for the morning deposit in Transdimensional’s bank.
To put it simply, George made out like a bandit. His horse, Feetlebaum, won going away. He came out of thre betting theater and waved his winning voucher under his brothers’ noses before sauntering out of the building (he’d had a direct deposit made.)
As for 77R, it was picked up in the morning from the bank by a woman named Kerrie, who ran a hairdressers’ place. She put the well-traveled bill into the till in the register in her shop. One of her customers…
… commonly known as “Bald Rita” happened to be in the shop that day, having moved up his/her weekly wig-washing and styling appointment one day. It just so happened that tonight was Butch Bingo, and Bald Rita was the fastest checker in skates. With his/her long locks flowing in the breeze, he/she was sure to capture the attention of the local media, who were covering the event, as proceeds were going to help repay the little league teams after their funds were embezzled by Diamond Doug Donaldstein, the most recently disgraced League Commissioner, also Rita’s ex-partner in a long series of failed relationships. Having paid for a wash/dry/style, as well as a mani/pedi, Bald Rita sauntered, moseyed, and skipped out of the hair salon, waving his/her nails in the wind, paying little attention to the “77R” prominently displayed in the outermost $20 bill. Unfortunately for him/her this lapse of attention…
…was not repeated by a nearby pickpocket. Eddie “Tiny Violin” Kashubian bumped into Bald Rita, hard, and in the confusion nicked 77R and another twenty. Rita picked herself up and yelled at Eddie, who apologized profusely (the real damage being done). Eddie mande an attempt to brush the dust off Rita’s clothes, but was rebuffed with a disgusted growl. “Just get away!”
Eddie did so and headed for a nearby alley, where his lover and partner-in-crime, Valencia, was waiting. They headed for cover, Eddie flashing the two twenties. “Not bad for five minutes’ work, Eddie!”
The story of 77R nearly ended with Valencia, for the rubenesque, dark-haired beauty was not known for letting money leave her grasp once she had it. Under the floorboards in the small apartment she and Eddie had shared since 1984 was a fifty dollar bill (A01281949A, if anyone’s interested) at the bottom of her stash of emergency cash that had been there since 1984. She had carefully and patiently added cash to the hideyhole over the years, and wasn’t even sure herself how much was there now; she would have been stunned to learn that she was worth over forty-five thousand dollars. 77R nearly joined the subfloor stash, but as it happened, Eddie was down to his last pack of Salem Lights, and Valencia reluctantly handed 77R back to the nimble-fingered filcher as they approached the corner bodega.
Eddie was in fact nearly out of smokes, but his real reason to slip into the market was…
to buy a mango/turnip Slurpee, some emu jerky and the pack of smokes. He handed 77R over to Roscoe the part-time clerk who also had a side business providing…
…‘appropriately-priced’ souvenirs for tourists. Opinion differed on the meaning of ‘appropriately’. Roscoe thought that the prices were great. The tourists often differed, once they’d gotten back to their hotels, taken a good close look at their new souvenirs, and figured out what they’d really paid for them. But by that time, Roscoe was long gone, and he rarely left a forwarding address or business card.
Roscoe made change for Eddie, and put 77R in the till. It rested there for only five minutes, until Eddie “Dawg, Man!” LeBrian Carruthers entered. This Eddie went to buy a Coke and an Eminem CD from the discount rack. Total price with tax: $9.45. Eddie presented a fifty. Roscoe grumbled and said, “Edidie, you’ve got to stop doing this. If the Nose finds out I’ve given out most of his change again, he’ll kick my butt!”
“Now Roscoe,” Eddie said, “Are you saying you don’t trust me?”
“No no,” Roscoe said hastily. “Your money’s fine with me.” He made the change and in doing so gave 77R to Eddie, hating Eddie and loathing himself all the time. I have to get out of this job, he thought. As always.
Eddie Carruthers, meanwhile, had a grandiose conception of himself as a gangsta lord. He worked out and showed off his muscles. He slouched intimidatingly on the subway. He adopted what he thought was a gangsta nickname. And he lusted after the Cadillac Escalade and the women he thought flocked after it.
But nothing he did was quite right. Real gangsta lords would have snickered and then kicked his butt… if Eddie ever let himself get close to them. As it was, he terrorized suburbanites and hippies who knew no better. And here in San Francisco, there were plenty of these to be found.
Eddie left the store and returned to his car, which…
although not an Escalade, was in pretty good shape for a '74 Pinto. Eddie, deciding he was hungry, headed on over to Louise Litzfield’s taco and scnnitzel stand. Few people knew this but Louise’s stand was actually a front for smuggling absinthe into the USA from black market absinthe smugglers in Macedonia. Eddie bought three schnitzels and a Diet Pepsi, giving 77R to Louise. Louise’s son Eddie Shinbooger (he was from one of her previous eight marriages) came in at that time and told his mom he needed twenty bucks for school supplies. Louise reluctantly handed over 77R to Eddie because the last time she gave him a twenty he…
ended up spending it on cigarettes and cheap beer. To prevent this from happening again, Louise confiscated Eddie’s fake ID and grounded him for two weeks. However, she knew Eddie–despite usually exhibiting all the intelligence of bag of unmixed concrete–did have an occasional clever thought every now and then and that it would be short time before he conjured up a reasonably authentic-looking driver’s licence indicating his age was 22.
Nonetheless, Louise decided to give Eddie the benefit of her strong doubts and gave him the $20 (i.e., 77R) for school supplies.
Eddie snatched 77R out of her hand, mumbled “thanks,” and ran out the stand’s back door. Without breaking pace, he hurried down the street for three blocks, turned around the corner, and walked right into…
…a plastic moose. This moose was life-size and gaudily-painted, a relic from a cultural campaign in a distant city. It stood on a low concrete plinth outside the shop of a discount and salvage electronic-parts supplier. Its antlers were missing, leaving a pair of disquieting holes in its head, into which the shop had inserted disquieting deep violet lights.
Eddie fell down. “What the…? That wasn’t there before.” He picked himself up and went into the shop to knock someone about, which was his way of complaining. The moose rotated slightly, as if its blank gaze was following him.
Who should observe this close encounter with a moose but Police Sergeant Samuel C. Greene, a veteran of the force who happened to be built like a tree, and who followed him into the store. There he delightedly boomed out, “Eddie ‘Tiny Violin’ Kashubian, as I live and breathe! Long time, no see, Eddie.” He strode up to the much smaller thief and thrust out his hand.
“Oh, hi, Sam,” Eddie said, trying but failing to squirm free of Sgt. Greene’s iron grip. “Um. how’s it goin’?”
“Fine, fine.” The policeman beamed at him. “Say, Eddie, it’s the damnedest thing. At roll call just this morning I heard that Judge Manashian had issued a warrant for your arrest. Had you heard about that?”
“Can’t say as I had.” He squirmed some more, to no avail.
Greene shook his head sympathetically. “Too bad, Eddie. Well, I’ve got to run you in now.” He slapped on the cuffs and began the Miranda litany: “You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney…”
The contents of Eddie’s pockets, including 77R, were inventoried and placed in an envelope, and the envelope in a police locker. When Eddie was convicted, three weeks later, of six counts of theft and one of impersonating a clergyman, the judge decided he’d had enough of Eddie’s long history of criminality and threw the book at him. The county Child Support Enforcement Agency thereafter filed a motion for the forfeiture of Eddie’s personal effects, including the $20 bill, which the judge was pleased to grant. The bill was transferred to the local Wells Fargo branch, counted, logged to CSEA’s credit and returned to circulation.
Four days later it was withdrawn along with three other $20 bills by Sarah Goodwin, a Navy officer who needed a little pocket money before she got on her Delta flight to Orlando. Although she bought a magazine and some mints in the airport, she didn’t spend 77R. She was met in Orlando by a NASA driver, who fought his way through the heavy central Florida traffic to deliver her to Kennedy Space Center. Goodwin had had special dispensation to leave her colleagues and break her rigorous training regimen to attend the funeral of her brother Evan, who’d died of bone cancer just four days earlier. After her return to KSC, a flight psychologist interviewed her and decided she was still fit to fly, a judgment concurred in by her fellow astronauts when they were quietly approached by other NASA shrinks.
Two weeks later, when the Space Shuttle Endeavour thundered off Launch Pad 39A, Capt. Sarah Goodwin, U.S. Navy, was at the controls as mission commander. As she skillfully guided the spacecraft into a transfer orbit to rendezvous with the International Space Station, she didn’t give a moment’s thought to 77R, still in her wallet down in the crew cabin, floating slightly in the microgravity.
Once Endeavour had docked with the ISS, Capt. Goodwin…
…handed control over to the Mission Specialist, one Mark Altounian. The crew made ready to open the hatch that led to the Station airlock and meet the Station’s crew, which included members from China, Japan, Russia, and (for the first time) Tonga.
Captain Goodwin did not know that 77R, the ragged twenty-dollar bill in her wallet, was a fake, made by Eddie Kashubian’s accomplice Valencia. She also didn’t know that one of the Station’s crew members was secretly an intelligence agent, trained in a myriad of unexpected things, including counterfeit currency detection.
Far below, Eddie Shinbooger counted himself lucky. He’d just been getting in the face of the geek at the electronic shop’s counter, just warming up, when Police Sergeant Greene had barged in… and confronted another customer, who also turned out to be named Eddie… Eddie Kashubian. In the confusion, Eddie Shinbooger had left quietly, considering the distraction of Sgt. Greene to be well worth the loss of some up-close pesonal contact of the kind he liked. A little later on the news, he saw Kashubian in court. He giggled. And in the following weeks, went on about his business with increased confidence and self-assurance.
Shinbooger spent the real 77R buying scratch-'n-win lottery tickets at his local 7-11. When he failed to win, he realized his life was back to normal. 77R, meanwhile, languished in the 7-11’s till…
for only an hour when it was given back as part of $23.23 in change to Jack Tyler who had just handed over a $50 bill to pay for gas. He put 77R into his wallet.
Jack, feeling dissatisfied and restless, had suddenly decided to take a long drive. As he left the 7-11 and returned to his car, he mulled over which direction he would go: west, east, south, or north. Since going west would be a very short trip, that option was quickly eliminated. Jack started his car and pulled away from the gas pumps. As he waited to pull out of the 7-11 parking lot onto the busy San Francisco street, he briefly considered his choices of going east on I-80, south on US 101, I-280, or Highway 1, or north on US 101. When the traffic had cleared, Jack put on his turning signal and made his decision.
He would go north on US 101.
Jack left the city and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. The traffic was thick but, fortunately, there were no slow-downs. With 77R still in his wallet, he followed 101 through San Rafael, Novato, and Petaluma. The roadway reduced from six to four lanes. He went past Santa Rosa. The traffic began to thin out. Past Cloverdale, 101 went to two lanes. All during this time, Jack’s attention was entirely focused upon the other motorists around him and the surrounding scenery. All other worries and concerns were shut out of his mind.
Jack continued northward past the redwoods. At Eureka, he considered stopping but decided to press on up the coast. Finally, near Crescent City, darkness and a thick fog bank convinced him to stop. He pulled into a Best Western on the south end of town and walked inside to the front desk where…
Cheater. :rolleyes:
…A tall redheaded woman named Lorna Dumfries greeted him. “May I help you?” she asked, in a thick Scottish burr.
Jack was taken aback by her appearance and accent, but shrugged it off and got a small room to move into for a few days. He had to pay a deposit, including 77R, before checking in. As he signed the register he noticed the last name before him:“Gwen Berry–bookstore manager,” in the book.
Gwen came up to the desk herself a couple hours later with a hundred-dollar bill. She and Lorna had known each other for several years, and Lorna gave her change, including the well-traveled twenty. Leaving the motel for a few hours, Ms. Berry…